Transformed landscapes of painful destructive mountain fires are unmasked and perception and mood shifted.
The Western Cape, South Africa, is home to the Cape Floristic Region, the smallest of the six recognised floral kingdoms of the world, an area of extraordinarily high diversity and endemism. Home to the greatest non-tropical concentration of higher plant species in the world, the region is the only hotspot that encompasses an entire floral kingdom. Summer is a time of intermittent, ferocious and frequent mountain and ‘fynbos’ fires.
The aftermath evokes multiple descriptions, representations and emotions: roaring, ugly, destructive, ferocity, loss; but also, those of silence, beauty, loneliness, restoration, and many other equivalents.
